


Blue light, red light

by septnanis



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Bedtime Stories, Fluff, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Kid Fic, M/M, Parents, Post-Canon, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Romance, Storytelling, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25670089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/septnanis/pseuds/septnanis
Summary: Yozora never knew why that story was his favourite, but when he wakes to a strange place and familiar faces made suddenly unfamiliar, he's going to find out.
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 78
Collections: Re⊕Collect: A Soriku Fic Collection





	Blue light, red light

“Tell me another story,” Yozora said dreamily.

Riku turned to his son and huffed out a laugh. He had already told him two stories, but just as Yozora had been dropping off to sleep and Riku prepared to make his exit, one blue and one red eye opened. Clearly, three times was the charm.

“I’ve told you two already,” Riku tried, sitting back down on Yozora’s bed. Only his face peeked out from underneath the covers. “Don’t you think it’s time to sleep now?”

Yozora shook his head. “Just one more... please?”

Although earnest, the high lilt of his voice melted Riku’s heart. One hand curled around the edge of his covers, and Riku realised quickly he wasn’t going to leave the room until one more story had been told.

Riku hummed. “Let me see... how about this one,” he began, lifting a hand to brush his fingers through Yozora’s bangs.

“A long time ago, before you were born, there were two little lights. They weren’t really little, but they were both lost in a big, big world, so they seemed little.

Even though his face was sleepy, Yozora looked riveted.

“... one little light was a blue light, and the other was a red light,” Riku continued.

He waited for a split second to see if any realisation dawned on Yozora’s face, but none came. He smiled and carried on. “And the blue light was looking for the red one.”

“Why?” Yozora asked, voice sleepy.

“Because the blue light loved the red light very much,” Riku explained. “It made a promise a long time ago to make sure nothing bad ever happened to the red light.”

Yozora nodded in response, like he understood perfectly.

“So, the blue light searched and searched and searched... only when it found the red light, it had forgotten all about it,” Riku said, sounding a little wistful.

Yozora’s eyes widened a little, his will to hear the rest of the story battling with his increasingly droopy eyes. “A bad person had taken the red light’s memories of the blue light.”

In the end, Riku made it to the end of his story and so did Yozora, though he dropped into sleep like a stone once Riku made it clear the story was over. He leaned down once more and pressed a kiss to Yozora’s forehead, fine hair tickling his nose. “Sleep well, little light,” he said, and left the door open just enough for a little light to make its way into the room.

* * *

“That took a while,” Sora said from his side of the bed.

Riku laughed like he did when Yozora asked for another story. “Told him the story about Shibuya...”

He waved his hand when Sora gave him a surprised look. “Didn’t tell him it was about us.”

“Didn’t tell him it was about him either, I hope,” Sora asked, looking a little worried. “Most of the time I still don’t understand what happened.”

He watched Riku sit down on the bed, leaning down on one hand so he could tilt himself towards Sora.

“Someday we’re going to have to tell him,” Riku said patiently, reaching over to cover Sora’s hand with his own. “He’s more astute than we give him credit for. He gets that from you.”

Sora rolled his eyes and leaned over to lay his cheek against Riku’s shoulder. “Why don’t you tell me a story, huh?”

Riku laughed and laid his own cheek on top of Sora’s head. “It’s not your bedtime, yet.”

Sora shrugged. “Don’t care. Tell me a story, Riku.”

He’d already told three, so there was no harm in telling one more.

And he’d never been good at saying no to Sora.

15 years later

When Yozora went to sleep that night, he expected, as he always did, to wake to his bedroom. It wasn’t a very exciting bedroom, full of mostly books and tools he used to tinker with his weapons. There was an old Struggle poster on the wall from when he was a little boy, and some pictures of his friends and family.

Instead, what he woke to was unlike anything he’d ever seen.

A large span of inky black sky, mildly lighter in some places due to the light of what appeared to be thousands upon thousands of brightly lit stars. There was no symmetry to them, and yet it felt as if they were all in the place they were meant to be. Other than the light of the stars, there was nothing else—no sound, just air and silence.

Yozora’s instincts kicked in once the lethargy of just waking bled out of him, and he sat up straight. He appeared to be lying on a watery surface, but he could not feel the water—just the same airy feeling that surrounded him.

“Took you long enough,” a voice broke through the silence behind him, and Yozora was up and standing before he could even think to do it.

Before him stood a hooded figure.

“Hiya,” he said, the carefree tone a sharp contrast to the ominous energy surrounding him.

Yozora’s body curled slightly inward, immediately on guard. “Where am I? Is this... is this a dream?”

The hooded figure threw out his arms in a dramatic fashion. “Is life naught more than just a dream? And you’d think with your parents, you’d be a little more of a dream expert.”

Torn between this mysterious figure knowing who he was and the mention of his fathers, Yozora lowered his defensive stance. He knew one of his fathers was a Dream Eater, but as he’d never done any dream diving himself, it was more theoretical knowledge than anything else. All he really knew was that his parents would give each other secret smiles when one of them asked if the other’d had any good dreams—it was yet another sappy thing for him as a son to roll his eyes at and ignore.

“I went to sleep and I woke up here,” Yozora explained. “So this must be a dream.”

“You just said you woke up,” the person standing across from him said. “You can’t dream while you’re awake. No matter what the poets say.”

Yozora said nothing in response.

“I brought you here,” was his next answer, even if it didn’t explain where ‘here’ was. “Because I want you to make things more interesting.”

The hooded figure gestured around him. “Very soon, you will be joined in this place by someone who is both familiar and unfamiliar to you. He will not know you, but you will know him... you’re all going to play a game with me.”

“I’m not a fan of games,” Yozora ground out. “So I think I’ll pass.”

“Ah! Here’s the thing... you don’t get to pass,” the figure waved a finger at him. “So if it’ll get you more willing to play, let’s say you’re going to go through some trials. By the end of them, you’ll get the chance to save some very important people.”

Yozora crossed his arms over his chest, and only then did he notice that his clothes were different. “And why do you need me to do that?”

“I don’t need you to do anything,” the figure explained. “But the people who do are going to show up soon.”

Fed up with the uncertainty and still convinced he was halfway through a dream, Yozora shook his head and stepped closer. The stars around him seemed to move with him, the sparkle of them breaking through the silence. “Someone once taught me to never let weird, mysterious people take too long monologuing about their weird, mysterious plans... so tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”

The figure burst into laughter. “I know exactly who you mean, and I’m not surprised that’s the wisdom he imparted on you.”

Suddenly, he was so close there was barely an inch between them, and Yozora stumbled back.

“Fine,” the figure said, and his nonchalant tone slipped suddenly into one that was so serious it cut through the dark and straight to Yozora’s bones.

He knew power when he felt it, and it made his fists curl. He could summon a weapon if he had to, but he wondered if he even stood a chance.

“This is what you’re going to do.” Yozora held his breath.

“Save Sora.”

... and let it go like he’d been punched in the gut.

“That’s right,” the figure said. “Dear old dad is going to show up and he’s going to need all the help he can get. You see, he made some choices, and the universe decided it couldn’t just let that fly. So I’m taking advantage of a situation that’s been a long time coming, and the only way he’ll be able to undo it is if he gets back what I took from him.”

If he hadn’t been so shocked, Yozora would have shouted at the figure for being so maddeningly vague. His father was in trouble? But how? He’d been making soup and drawing Keychain designs in the kitchen right before Yozora had gone to sleep. How could something so terrible have happened in so short a time? And how could it have happened under his other father’s nose?

“He’s not going to be like you remember,” he continued. “In fact, he’ll be the way he was long before you were a twinkle in either of your pops’ eyes. Speaking of both of your father figures... the other will show up later, and he’s going to be a key piece in this whole game.”

So he had to help both his fathers out of a sticky situation. He could do that. Yozora had been raised by two Keyblade Masters, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to make sure they were safe. They’d both protected him his whole life; he could do the same for them.

“One last thing before I exit stage left,” the mysterious figure said, and a sudden feeling of dread filled Yozora.

“They can’t know. They can’t for a second know who you are, where you’re from, and that you know who they are. You can’t tell them they’re headed for a happily ever after. Because if you do, it won’t happen. And most importantly... you won’t happen.”

The feeling of dread turned to fear.

“I wish you the very best of luck, kiddo,” the voice said, carefree again, as if the whole situation was full of fun and humor. “And remember... save Sora.”

He disappeared as silently as he had appeared, and the silence he left was deafening.

* * *

“I see you,” Yozora responded to the calls coming from the distance. The voice was so familiar but so different. It was higher, lighter... younger. It couldn’t be.

But the stars of the night sky that surrounded everything gave off enough light to show the silhouette of a young man—a young man who looked like a pale reflection of his father.

His father, who was at least a head taller than this guy, a heck of a lot less scrawny, his arms and calves decorated with colorful tattoos, and his clothing airy and comfortable. He’d seen a picture or two of his father when he was younger, but it had never stuck with him long enough to be able to associate this kid with the Sora he knew.

It was strange to even think of his father as “Sora”.

“Hey, aren’t you...” the younger Sora said, and immediately fear shot through Yozora.

There was no way Sora could know who he was. This Sora didn’t look a day over sixteen, and he’d come into the world when Sora was well into his twenties.

The cloaked figure’s voice echoed through his head, reminding him that Sora finding out who he was equaled an automatic game over. The dread spread throughout his body.

“You know me?” Yozora asked with hesitance.

The younger version of his father began to speak, and when he introduced himself, Yozora did the only thing he could think of and laid on as thick as he could that he had no idea who Sora was.

“Sure. I’ve heard of you.” It only managed to alleviate some of his fear.

The babbling that followed made it easier to believe this was his father.

“Are you done?”

It was harsh, and the Sora from his time would never have let him get away with a tone like that. It would never have even occurred to him to speak to him like that, but this kid was just... even though it was easier, it was still nearly impossible to believe this kid would eventually become his Keyblade-forging, war-winning, legendary hero father.

In a last-ditch effort to make absolutely sure Sora did not make any assumptions about who he was—like how he had already seemed to know his name, and recognised him like they’d already met before—Yozora unsheathed his weapon, the crossbow he’d built with the older version of the young man before him, and held his breath when a stained glass floor formed beneath their feet. Suddenly, it felt wholly familiar, and he knew for a fact that this young man was his father in some form, the warmth and glow of his heart surrounding him.

It was difficult for Yozora to keep steady hearing the panic in Sora’s voice.

But still, he unsheathed his weapon and prayed Sora didn’t notice who had taught Yozora how to fight.

* * *

If Yozora thought his father was a goofy, occasionally air-headed kid, then meeting Riku—his hero, a man he had worshipped his entire life—was a shock to the system he was never going to get over.

This Riku was shorter than Yozora was used to, and so young and apprehensive.

Riku’s mind may not remember Sora, but Yozora could tell his heart yearned for him.

Riku taught him that years ago: that even if the mind forgets, a heart will always remember.

“Look,” Yozora said, feeling his palms sweat as the timer kept running down. “We are literally minutes away from the end of the world.”

Riku threw up his arms at Yozora. “How do you even know that... this is all a dream. Doesn’t the timer just mean we’ll wake up?”

“And what if this is your only shot?” Yozora said, crossbow slipping in his sweaty palm.

He watched as Riku turned to Sora and felt their hearts resonate even though neither of them remembered one another. It was heartbreaking to watch, but Yozora was determined. Even if that meant that it was down to him to get his future parents together.

The sigh he suppressed was bone-deep. Matchmaking his own parents. No amount of training could ever prepare him for that. When he got home, if he ever got home, he was going to move away to a boring world where nothing ever happened and nobody knew him. No more time travel, no more strange hooded figures...

He stood between the two of them.

“It is more important than anything... that you two remember why you’re here,” Yozora said.

Sora held up his hands in frustration. “But Yozora, we’ve tried everything!”

They had been through a plethora of attempts to get their memories jumpstarted, but nothing seemed to work.

_The mind may forget, but the heart remembers._

Yozora heard it clearly in his father’s voice. He missed him suddenly, so much, both of them. If they had been here, they would know what to do. Without them, he felt so alone, even if for all intents and purposes, they stood before him. And they had fought so hard, but time was running out.

Yozora closed his eyes, and an unbidden memory suddenly flooded his thoughts.

He didn’t have a mother. He had been given the explanation of his birth years ago and, even after several versions of the explanation, he still didn’t understand. But then, suddenly, he did.

Whoever the cloaked figure was, he had somehow managed to store both Sora and Riku’s memories of each other inside Yozora. Sleeping inside Yozora’s heart.

So he knew what he had to do. He stepped between them. “Listen to me,” He began.

Sora held out a hand to him. “Yozora, what are you...”

“I said, listen,” he pressed on. “You’re both Keyblade wielders.” Both Sora and Riku nodded.

“And you both have the Power of Waking, right?”

The two of them nodded again, but began to look apprehensive. The numbers on their palms continued to count down to zero, and the chance of all three of them meeting a horrible fate was becoming all too real. He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t.

“Use it,” Yozora said.

Riku stepped up to him, his fists curling together. “Are you nuts? We don’t know what’ll happen here... who knows what effect it might have.”

Sora nodded in agreement and stood close to him. For a moment, it was almost like he was home and Yozora repressed the urge to put his arms around his much younger parents.

“I said, use it,” Yozora insisted. “It’ll give you what you need to win. And you two have got to win. For everyone’s sake. And I believe you can.” He sighed and looked them both in the eyes. “More than anything,

I believe in you two.”

Sora put his hands behind his head and looked a little sheepish. “Yozora, come on... there’s gotta be another way.”

“Sora’s right, we’ll figure something out,” Riku offered, even though it was half-hearted.

Riku had always been the one to agree that sometimes, the best plans didn’t always necessarily have the best outcomes.

“You don’t have to figure anything out, I already have,” Yozora said, putting his hands on both their chests, right where their hearts were, and pushing them away. “Get out your Keyblades and use the Power of Waking on me. You’ve trusted me so far, we’ve got to see it through to the end.”
    
    
    01:49

Riku was the first to step back and summon his Keyblade. That was his dad: ready to do what was necessary even though it frightened him. Riku had taught him that, and he hoped he would again. That he would be able to.
    
    
    01:21

Sora followed, but with far more reluctance. “I hope I’m doing this right,” he said, summoning his Keyblade. From where he stood, Yozora could see his hands shake. “But I believe in you, Yozora.”

Faith. The core of this man that had raised him. Something he had always hoped he had inherited from him.
    
    
    00:49

They were equal parts light and dark, the two of them, and, standing between them, Yozora felt like he stood on a perfectly balanced scale. He could feel the power rising as they lifted their Keyblades towards him. Yozora closed his eyes.
    
    
    00:22

“The mind may forget, but the heart remembers,” Yozora murmured as light shone from the ends of both their Keyblades.

When their power surged through him, it was so intense it was like taking a punch to the gut, and suddenly a thousand images rushed through and out of him and he knew it had worked.

The darkness that followed was calm and quiet, like falling asleep.
    
    
    00:00

* * *

“Hey!”

He knew that voice. It was perfectly familiar. Not too high, not too light, not too young.

“He’s awake!” There it was again, and Yozora was almost afraid to open his eyes.

“Yeah he is, but don’t fuss, Sora.” There was another voice Yozora knew and he felt suddenly so full of emotion he could burst in all directions. “Yozora?”

He opened his eyes and felt the embarrassing burn of tears in them the minute the light hit them.

Yozora saw Riku first, muted colored formal robes surrounding him, one gold tassel catching Yozora’s eye. He was tall as could be, broad-shouldered and he had such a wonderfully calm look on his face that half the tension in Yozora’s body fled just looking at him.

Once Yozora had his fill of one of his fathers’ faces, he looked over at the other.

Sora’s face was just as it should be, right down the little scar above his eyebrow and the colorful tattoo that peeked out from underneath his tunic.

“You feeling okay, kiddo?” Sora asked, his voice tender and his palm cool on Yozora’s forehead. “You were gone for three days... we were starting to get really worried.”

“Three days?!” Yozora exclaimed, shooting upright. It made his head spin.

Riku put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy now.” His voice contained the same calm his face exuded. “I bet you’ve got quite the story to tell.”

Yozora leaned back on his hands and slumped, comforted by the knowledge he was home and safe with the people he was meant to be with.

“You’d never believe me if I told you,” Yozora said. Sora and Riku gave each other a look, amused.

Sora winked at Yozora. “Try us.”

* * *

“Okay, so on the count of three, we drop the sticks in and run to the other side to see who wins,” Sora said, smiling when Yozora nodded enthusiastically, clutching his little stick in his hand. “One... two... three... go!”

They both dropped their sticks into the water and Sora hoisted Yozora up in his arms, running across the width of the bridge to the other side. Yozora giggled in his hold and slapped his hands down on the stone edge of the bridge once they reached it. They both peered over the edge and waited until one little stick made its way first from underneath the bridge, floating lazily on the current.

“Look!” Yozora shouted and pointed. “My stick! I won!”

Sora smiled wide and pulled him a little closer. “You did! Great job, kiddo.”

“But papa, I didn’t do anything,” Yozora replied with a serious face.

Sora lifted him up with one arm and set him down so he could sit on the edge of the stone bridge. He kept one arm wrapped around him, even though he knew Yozora was too sensible a child to go over the edge. In fact, it was far more likely Sora would go over than Yozora. “A magnet for trouble”, Riku still called him fondly.

“Sure you did,” Sora said, using his free hand to give Yozora’s nose a tweak. “Sometimes believing you’re going to do it is enough to make it happen. Faith’s powerful magic, little man, don’t ever forget that.”

Yozora nodded with an earnest face and put one small hand on Sora’s shoulder. “Papa?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah?”

“Did you always know you loved dad?”

The question came out of absolutely nowhere and threw Sora entirely for a loop. He was used to Yozora asking banal questions at random times. That’s what kids do. There was something endearing and sweet about it, besides the fact that it meant his son was eager to learn. It was an admirable quality that Sora had no qualms indulging in.

But the question was so personal and went far beyond wanting to know why the sun made the sky turn different colors, or why everyone had a different way of holding a Keyblade.

Sora thought about it for a moment, tilting his head back. He thought about being young, younger than he was at that moment, and looking at his best friend since forever in one light, and then in another, and another, until he stepped into the light where the sight of Riku sent his heart racing and his hands sweaty. It hadn’t happened all at once, but gradually—a deep understanding that started before he knew what it meant.

“I always loved your dad, even when I was really little, even littler than you are,” Sora explained. Yozora looked rapt. “But you know how there are a lot of different ways to love people?”

Yozora nodded.

“You love your dad and me in a different way than you love your friends, or your Aunt Kairi,” Sora continued. “And sometimes, the way you love someone can change. I loved your dad like a friend for a really long time, but it changed along the way. And luckily, he felt the same way.”

Yozora began to play with one of the buttons on Sora’s jacket. “So you got married.”

Sora laughed. “Well, we didn’t get married right away,” he said. “But we did get married eventually. It’s because your dad’s a big romantic sap,” Sora whispered to Yozora, like they weren’t out all by themselves in the middle of the forest. “But don’t tell him I said that.”

Because then Riku would definitely say that Sora was the one who had cried when Riku proposed marriage... and cried again at the wedding.

Yozora giggled, his nose wiggling with amusement. “I promise!”

Even though he’d probably manage to sneak the question in to Riku somehow. Sora wouldn’t blame him.

“But when, papa?” Yozora asked, still playing with the button. “When what?” Sora returned, a little confused.

Yozora sighed, the spitting image of Riku for just a moment. “When did you know it had changed? How much you loved dad?”

It rendered Sora speechless for a moment, until he lifted his son off the stone ledge of the bridge they were on and set him down. His little brown boots were scuffed and covered in mud from playing in the woods. Riku would probably sigh and tell them to leave their boots at the door or else, but he’d be fond and loving about it—like he was about mostly everything to do with the two of them.

He held out a hand for Yozora to take and squeezed firmly when Yozora gladly took it.

They walked across the stone bridge and back into the forest in the direction of home.

“Let me tell you a story about two little lights,” Sora began.

“I know this story!” Yozora interrupted. “Daddy tells it at bedtime sometimes...”

He suddenly looked a little shy. “It’s my favorite...”

Sora looked down at his son as they walked and felt suddenly like this story was more important than anything he’d told Yozora yet.

“Well,” he said, and blue eyes met blue and red, two little lights in a beloved little face. “You’re gonna love my side.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was beyond honored when the mods of the Recollect fic zine approached me to be a part of it. And because I am completely incapable of being patient about what's going to happen in the next game (the fabled DDD2) I decided to indulge myself and hopefully you by writing this, with the added bonus that Yozora is actually a pandimensional Soriku kid. 
> 
> Until Yozora is confirmed as whatever he's going to end up being, he's free real estate as far as I'm concerned. And the idea of both Sora and Riku telling him stories about how he basically got them together was too good to pass up.
> 
> Please watch this collection for all the other wonderful works by the other wonderful authors, and I hope very much that you enjoyed!


End file.
